In
company, side by side, mulattoes, blacks and whites have lived,
worked, enjoyed themselves and fought their revolutions. There is
absolutely no color line. A friend of mine from Virginia received
quite a shock the first time he attended a state ball in Santo Domingo
and saw an immense negro, as black as coal, a member of Congress,
dancing with a girl as white as any of the foreign ladies present. He
rushed to the refreshment room and beckoned to a tall mulatto in a
dress suit: "I'll have something to cool off, here waiter--" He was
stopped just in time for he was mistaking the secretary of foreign
affairs for a waiter; but after this experience he was afraid of
giving his order to anyone else for fear he might be offending some
other high official. The blacks are commonly the lower laborers, but
negroes are to be found in all grades of society and are not
infrequently represented in the cabinet itself. Of the presidents the
majority have been of mixed blood, but several, like Luperon and
Heureaux, were full-blood negroes. It appears that the strong strain
of white blood in the country has elevated all, mulattoes and negroes.
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